CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98693

Low risk· EPSS 9%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.20%

9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the Thunderbolt driver's tb_stop() drops references to DP tunnels without deactivating them, so dprx_work can still run after the router is removed. This leads to operations on freed IDA structures and warnings such as "ida_free called for id=8 which is not allocated". It can be triggered by unbinding the driver while a DP tunnel is still waiting for the DPRX capabilities read to finish.

Risk Assessment

May cause kernel warnings, corruption of internal state, and potential system instability when unbinding the Thunderbolt driver or unplugging a cable (e.g., on Apple NHI hardware).

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that holds a router reference for each allocated HopID. Until then, avoid unbinding the Thunderbolt driver while DP tunnels are active.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: thunderbolt: Hold a router reference for each allocated HopID tb_stop() drops the reference to all DP tunnels but does not deactivate them, thus nothing cancels a dprx_work still in flight (which holds its own tunnel reference) and the tunnel can outlive tb_switch_remove(). The HopID releases in tb_path_free() then operate on freed IDAs and trigger warnings like ida_free called for id=8 which is not allocated. This can be triggered by unbinding the driver while a DP tunnel is still waiting for the DPRX capabilities read to finish. On the Apple NHI unplugging the cable runs into just that reliably because the read can never finish right now and because the unplug powers down the entire USB4 complex and removes the NHI device. Take a router reference whenever an input or output HopID is allocated and drop it again after the HopID is released. This keeps the ports and their HopID IDAs alive for as long as they are used. The KUnit tests allocate routers without ever registering their devices so initialize the embedded struct device there as well and drop its initial reference when the test is finished.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS